Chapter Nine #2
Audrey, in a prime spot with a sleeping Sloane, shoots me a she’s talking to you look. Your husband has seen my nipples. “Take several deep, healing breaths through your nostrils, expand your belly and chest, fill your lungs.”
Twenty minutes in, Sloane has woken up and is screaming her head off and I am doing downward dog over my baby.
I look at the daffodil-colored diamond on my finger.
What am I doing here? I had a critical missing person assignment.
Why am I feeling insecure in a two p.m. yoga class that was supposed to include chocolate?
Holden has fallen asleep. I take a photo and post it on Instagram. “Savasana is my favorite part, too.”
I was hoping to use his nap to try to find Daisy.
I used to temp at Wired and bonded with a guy named Malcom who went on to write a viral article about the dark web for The Atlantic.
Or was it The Economist? Either way, it was behind a paywall so I didn’t read it.
I DMed him, thinking maybe he could help me search deep corners of the internet.
Malcom was working at the Geek Squad at the Best Buy in Union Square and freelancing on the side.
He said we could talk that afternoon on his break.
I needed to be home at my laptop with a fast wi-fi connection and a preferably sleeping baby.
I bail, lifting Holden into his stroller and tiptoeing out.
I trip over a block. “Sorry. Sorry.” One of the moms shushes me.
In my mind, this is when I pull out a Snickers, unwrap it loudly, and shove it into my mouth, yelling, “I know, I know. You’re all so skinny and Zen, but I bet you’re oozing bodily fluids in cat pose and blowing up your open-concept kitchens like the rest of us.
” But I just smile, pushing our way into the elevator. Deep breath. Namaste.
I lift the Yoyo onto the sidewalk, trying not to wake Holden as I race for the bus. The express bus closes its doors right in my face. A couple of teenagers see this and crack up. “Yo, that was mad cruel,” one kid says into his clenched fist, as they laugh their way into a vape shop.
I’d either have to walk half an hour home or wait half an hour for another bus.
Either way, I would not be home for Holden’s nap or Malcom’s break.
I text Malcom, telling him we’re on our way to meet him at Best Buy.
An hour later, he writes back with a discount code for a free trial of BeenVerified and says he can meet me at ten p.m. at a bar near his place in Fort Greene.
I prop myself against a leaning bench in Union Square Park, trying to avoid its spikes.
“Hostile architecture,” they call it. I rock Holden’s stroller with my foot and type “Daisy” into BeenVerified.
Battery is at three percent. Wi-fi circling.
The wheel spins…Then: “Error. No Results Found. Connection Lost.” The screen goes black. Perfect.
When you are childless, New York seems so vast, you could take a year off work and never hit every gallery, browse every bookshop, get rush tickets to every matinee.
But the second I had a baby, I lost access to New York’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
I had no idea how to burn off a weekday.
Our home was filled with dust and vibrated from construction noise.
Library classes were free but only lasted an hour.
I’d pay entry fees at a museum and end up spending most of my time at the changing tables.
I’d walk Holden across the Brooklyn Bridge on nice days, but it was too hot and he’s got that newborn, half-Scottish skin, and where to pee?
I tried coffee shops but got tired of the dirty looks from hipsters who went there to read or work or write poetry. I get it, I used to be you.
—
I am pushing Holden east, toward our apartment, my mind raging in a daily debate.
Is it worth withstanding the cacophony of heavy machinery next door to be home with toys and a cleanish bathroom?
Or do we roam the streets until Roman gets home, providing us with plenty of opportunities for people watching and park space, but nowhere to pee (for me)? I look at Holden. Still conked out.
I mentally review all the Daisy clues I’ve collected, cataloging the timeline and tips.
I stop outside the gate of Gramercy Park, manicured rosebushes and pristine grass that requires a key to enter.
The good thing about having nowhere to be is that you have time to take in the beauty of New York’s hidden gems, or, in my case, seethe that only the very rich can smell these roses.
I think of Penelope, my heiress friend. She has a key to the park.
She is subletting a co-op apartment on the Upper East Side while renovating a Gramercy town house.
She is also, of course, keeping her place on Park Avenue, for tax purposes.
We were both in our twenties when Penelope and I first met.
I’d been temping, writing grants for her family’s charitable foundation, which had to do with charter schools before that became too controversial and they pivoted to something involving orphans in Africa.
Penelope dropped out of Princeton her junior year and was working for an Italian design firm that made her do entry-level jobs.
She hated it, so she quit and decided to help with her family’s foundation. We’d been friends ever since.
We came from different worlds but felt like we’d known each other forever.
This made no sense. Every day I’d arrive to help Penelope’s family with odd jobs—closet organizing, dog walking, gift wrapping—and she’d bring me an iced espresso and a warm croissant from Ladurée.
At lunch, we’d walk to Central Park, listening to music on Penelope’s phone.
At night, we’d drink sparkling rosé and order takeout from Il Mulino and watch The Bachelor.
I remember watching the lineup of eligible dental hygienists and real estate agents, thinking that Penelope was more beautiful than all of them.
She has blue eyes and naturally blond hair and a perfect body, and even when she is flossing, it looks like she is playing the violin.
She called me Emily Joan (EmJo, for short) and told me everything: how her mom, whose lineage went back to the Vanderbilts or the Fricks or one of those families that employed eight-year-olds in steel factories, had pawned her and her brothers off on governesses and boarding school, an acceptable form of neglect.
Her dad, whom she vaguely referred to as “a financier,” had a whole other family she didn’t know about.
New York was democratic like that. You could make fourteen dollars an hour as a temp at the Nonprofit Staffing Solution and still, somehow, bond over childhood baggage with an heiress.
The closer Penelope and I became, the more she trusted me with additional responsibilities.
I began filling my nights and weekends with payroll for her domestic staff, keeping track of charity luncheons, even assembling spreadsheets ahead of tax season, which always started right after the holiday gift-wrapping bonanza.
After that, I guess I became a sort of professional best friend.
Even though I wasn’t on the payroll, I worried that if I wasn’t at Penelope and her family’s perpetual service, she might lose interest in me. But that didn’t happen.
In those days, before we both got married and had babies, there were clubs with table service and roofies and house parties in the Hamptons and bonfires on the beach with tiki torches and champagne.
The summer nights and days would all blend together and I was always sunburned, while she always looked like she’d been kissed by Charlotte Tilbury bronzer.
We almost never got back to Penelope’s place before two a.m. And when people would ask how we knew each other, she never told them that I worked for her family.
She would take my hand and say I went to Bryn Mawr and was her best friend—and everyone looked at me like they wanted to be Penelope’s best friend, too.
I am still standing there, thinking about those nights with Penelope, staring into Gramercy Park, when I remember that Jersey had told me I needed to hire a private investigator to track down Daisy.
I text Penelope. “Hey, I’m in your ’hood. Wanna hang?”